Archives for March 2016

For years, I bemoaned the fact that Little Rock, Arkansas did not have a micro-roastery I was excited to visit. It seemed Onyx was the only craft coffee game in Arkansas. On a recent trip to Arkansas, however, a dear friend kindly informed me that there was a new roaster in Little Rock that I needed to check out: Mylo Coffee Co.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk wrote in his memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City, “it was in Cihangir (where we too would move as our fortunes dwindled) that I first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives – a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what – but an archipelago of neighborhoods in which everyone knew one another.” Pamuk’s observation rings true today. Cihangir has long been a destination for artists and writers, but at the neighborhood’s heart is a community: a village surrounded by a megacity. Norm Coffee is one piece of that community….

Hungarian coffee cinematographers Kavekalmar are back at it again with a new video about making espresso by hand. It’s a little less ambitious than their last video project, but the above mountain of spent espresso pucks shows just some of the sacrifices one has to make in the name of art. We’ve long been advocates of hand-grinding, but now we want snag a lever machine for the Compass lab. Watch the video below and see if you don’t as well.

Greenville, South Carolina might have America’s prettiest café. Nestled on the ground floor of a Bank of America just off of the aptly-named Coffee Street stands Methodical Coffee, a humble yet highly sophisticated cafe that offers a minimalistic menu with exceptional service and quality….

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of coffee subscriptions out there. Whether it’s through a roaster or assembled by a third party, each promises to send freshly roasted coffee to your doorstep. Only one problem: you usually get stuck with some coffee that isn’t your favorite. Rather than going into the grinder, it’s destined to sit around your kitchen a couple of months and finally get tossed at the behest of your spouse/roommate/life partner. Unless you’re subscription is with Crema.co. …

Philadelphia-based coffee company La Colombe is making national headlines with their new draft latte. They’ve offered the frothy, chilled beverage at their cafés since last year, but a recent innovation has allowed La Colombe to can the drink as a shelf-stable product. In a new video La Colombe cofounder Todd Carmichael offers a glimpse into their proprietary process. Long time readers of The Compass will spot James Tooill, consulting with Carmichael about some green coffee. Watch the video below and see if you can resist purchasing a four-pack of the draft latte online.